As results of GE15 began to unfold over TV and the social media, most outcomes turned out to be more or less as predicted. Then came news that a few big names or heavyweight hitters like Khairy Jamaluddin, Nurul Izzah, Tengku Adnan and Ku Li didn’t make it to the list of fresh parliamentarians.
The biggest shock late into the night came when it was announced that Tun Mahathir had lost. He had garnered only 4,566 votes or 6.8% less than the threshold votes required to keep his deposit as a candidate. What an ignominious defeat for a powerful politician who once dominated the affairs of his country for a long time! In a career spanning more than half a century he was a formidable figure, towering over his own country, while casting a long shadow over the region and sometimes beyond.
He started life as a medical doctor. He was a writer and then a parliamentarian. Most of all, he was a Malay nationalist who emerged as a Third World spokesman. He led Malaysia to become known as a progressive Muslim nation.
It has been said that what he did had always been based on political expediency. However, Tun Mahathir can be elusive too. He would present himself as a bundle of contradictions. For example, he was quoted as “a Malay champion and an ally of Chinese Malaysian businessman; a tireless campaigner against Western domination while assiduously courting American and European capitalists.”
He could be blunt, abrasive even but would extoll the virtues of Asian values. Like many successful politicians, Tun Mahathir would compromise to meet the dynamic of changing and competing political demands of the time.
To many, his vision is limitless, and yet to others he is an enigma who thrives on being the contrarian who espoused unfashionable ideas and controversial policies.
Early in his Premiership he promoted the "Look East Policy". This year it celebrated 40 years of cooperation with Japan that was supposed to have brought about "sustainable and efficient development models". Quite apart from having 26,000 Malaysians trained in Japan to help manage and nurture this initiative, not much outcomes have turned up. Then under the Sixth Malaysia Plan, and in February 1991, Tun Mahathir presented his “Vision 2020“ or “Wawasan 2020”.
2020 had come and gone, but the Vision Thing aspired for, had not quite come through.
Tun Daim explained the unrealized mission this way, "failure to handle polarizing issues hampered economic reform". Someone cynically put it down to a case of political cataract that was not to be correctable.
On his second watch as PM, Tun Mahathir dithered when it came time for him to hand over the torch to Dato Sri Anwar. Eventually, the government collapsed under the weight of an underhanded maneuver. Tun Mahathir walked away without assuming any responsibility. This must have left a bitter taste in many people’s mouths.
After serving two terms totaling 24 years, Tun Mahathir at age 97 had hoped to make another come back in GE15 to dislodge a corrupt and inept caretaker government so that he might rescue the country’s tattered economy and bring the nation back on an even keel again. That was not to be.
And for a man who has done so much for the country to be rejected and cast aside so suddenly and so rudely is indeed a sad episode.
It is also the story of the enigma that is Mahathir and perhaps the end of an era.
Oyang Sen is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav.
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